Previous research has shown that public trust is vital for promoting policy compliance, particularly in times of crisis. However, the literature supporting this notion remains scarce, especially in countries which have successfully contained a pandemic despite showing a generally low level of public trust in the government. To address this topic, we conducted a cross-sectional study between February and March of 2020 to examine the relationship between public trust and the compliance of the general public in adopting personal protective measures introduced during the early phase of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak in Thailand. We report our result from a hierarchical regression. We find a positive and significant relationship between public trust in the government and the likelihood of respondents adopting these precautions, more importantly, this relationship was fully mediated by the professional trust as the effect of public trust in the government on policy compliance was reduced by 0.118, namely from (β = 0.133, p < 0.001) to (β = 0.015, p > 0.05). Married respondents residing in the capital city, with a higher degree of worry were also more likely to comply with these safety measures. In conclusion, the finding sheds light on the dynamic relationship between public trust and policy compliance and offers some implications in times of a global health crisis.

The purpose of this study is to determine whether there are gender differences in people’s pro-environmental psychology and behaviors in China. An online survey was conducted with the snowball sampling technique, and a sample of 532 Chinese respondents was obtained for the research. This study finds that gender does affect green psychology and behaviors, with females reporting a higher level of environmentalism in China. Specifically, females are more concerned with environmental problems, more supportive of plastic ban policies, more positive towards reducing plastics (reduce), and have stronger intention to bring a reusable bag for shopping (reuse and recycle). Moreover, females use fewer disposable toiletries when checking in a hotel and require less disposable tableware when ordering takeout. This study contributes to the current literature by identifying the relationship between gender and environmentalism in China. Implications for anti-plastic policy design and environmental management are also presented.